Back before the November election, many mainstream media pundits  trying desperately to get John Kerry elected  began to harp on President Bush's unwillingness to stop certain federal gun control laws from expiring as scheduled. But their propaganda efforts came to naught because this issue was a non-starter with the American people.

The fact is, in this day of post-9/11 increased security consciousness, most average Americans simply dont want more gun control. They want more guns on hand to defend themselves and their loved ones in the face of possible life-threatening danger. Soccer moms are now taking handgun proficiency courses down at the local firing range.

Liberals are always complaining about getting to the root of the problem  unless it deals with gun rights. Then they abandon all logical analysis and resort to hysteria, distortion and downright lies.

Today I want to set the record straight and dispel a few of the more common myths with some hard facts.

First, according to statistics provided by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, there is an interesting correlation between accidental deaths caused by guns and those caused by doctors.

Doctors: (A) There are 700,000 physicians in the U.S. (B) Accidental deaths caused by physicians total 120,000 per year. (C) Accidental death percentage per physician is 0.171.

Guns: (A) There are 80 million gun owners in the U.S. (B) There are 1,500 accidental gun deaths per year, all age groups. (C) The percentage of accidental deaths per gun owner is 0.0000188.

Statistically, then, doctors are 9,000 times more dangerous to the public health than gun owners are.

Fact: NOT EVERYONE HAS A GUN, BUT ALMOST EVERYONE HAS AT LEAST ONE DOCTOR. Following the logic of liberals, we should all be warned: "Guns don't kill people. Doctors do."

More seriously, Dr. Glen Otero of the Claremont Institute has published an enlightening article entitled "Ten Myths About Gun Control." (The entire article can be found at the Web site of Doctors for Sensible Gun Laws, www.dsl.org.) Here are just a few of his well-documented findings.

Approximately 80 percent of all adult American citizens own firearms, and a gun can be found in nearly half of American households.

Between 1974 and 1995, the total number of privately owned firearms in America increased by 75 percent, to 236 million. During the same period, national homicide and robbery rates did NOT significantly increase.

Fewer than 1 percent of all guns are involved in any type of crime, which means that over 99 percent of all guns are NOT used to commit any crime.

In 1987, the National Crime Victimization Survey estimated that about 83 percent of Americans would become the victims of violent crime during the course of their lifetimes.

The National Self-Defense Survey found that between 1988 and 1993, American civilians used firearms in self-defense almost 2.5 million times per year, saving up to 400,000 lives per year in the process.

Guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens deter crime. Where U.S. counties have enacted concealed-carry laws, murder rates fell by 8 percent, rape by 5 percent, and aggravated assault by 7 percent. Urban counties recorded the largest decreases demographically.

You get the picture: Guns dont kill people. People kill people. But sometimes law-abiding citizens with guns can save the lives of other innocent people.

Its time to restore some common sense to the hysterical debate over gun control. When Cain killed Abel with a rock, God didnt ban all rocks. He dealt with Cain personally. We need to enforce our criminal laws against murder, robbery and assault.

I will cite the testimony of just one more expert witness. No, its not another politician or media pundit. Heres what former Mafia underboss, self-confessed hit man and government informant Sammy "The Bull" Gravano had to say:

"Gun control? Its the best thing you can do for crooks and gangsters. I want you to have nothing. If Im a bad guy, Im always gonna have a gun. Safety locks? You pull the trigger with a lock on, and Ill pull the trigger. Well see who wins."

Its time for liberals to go out and buy a gun. And maybe get a life  or at least protect one.

This month's Health and Healing newsletter by Dr. Julian Whitaker indicates that about 800,000 people are killed each year by adverse reactions from prescription medication- more than heart disease and cancer combined.

7
posted on 12/29/2004 2:29:46 PM PST
by Rockitz
(After all these years, it's still rocket science.)

Do Doctors kill more people than cigarettes? Maybe we should outlaw Doctors (especially in the inner city)? Or at least levy hefty tax on people stupid enough to use Doctors. Its for their own good anyway, as using a Doctor has been shown to precede death. For good measure, hospitals should be sued for "distributing" Doctors.

You have to understand, that Doctors in general make a good living and therefore are among the "privileged". For that reason it certainly is justified to believe any made up derogatory statistics about them.

33
posted on 12/29/2004 4:07:39 PM PST
by Bushforlife
(I've noticed that everybody that is for abortion has already been born. ~Ronald Reagan)

If you rupture an abdominal aortic aneurysm outside the hospital, but make it to the hospital alive, the survival rate is less than 50%, due to the nature of the disease. So the surgeons who take these very ill patients to the operating room immediately save 50% of them. That's the rational viewpoint.

On the other hand, we have the irrational, conventional wisdom, emotionally charged sensationalist viewpoint: those surgeons kill half of those patients.

As a practicing physician for 25 years, I truly look forward to retirement. Our society's prevailing victim mentality that physicians are responsible for any bad medical outcome has led me to the point where I actually actively discourage any young person who wishes to practice medicine, including my own children. For those of you who subscribe to the "hate the privileged doctor class warfare mentality", I have this advice: Go Treat Yourselves.

35
posted on 12/29/2004 4:34:04 PM PST
by Bushforlife
(I've noticed that everybody that is for abortion has already been born. ~Ronald Reagan)

Oh boy, we get to revist the old "doctors kill more people than....." meme yet again.

First of all, consider that the VAST majority of people who are checked into a hospital are sick (duh). The severity of the sickness obviously determines the prognosis (again, duh). There are many instances where certain treatments, or lack thereof, can hasten the death of someone who was already terminal. If that means a person dies 3 months sooner than expected, the study used to derive this number counts that as a "physician caused death".

The study itself, conducted by the Institute of Medicine has been shown to be highly questionable.

As a practicing physician for 25 years, I truly look forward to retirement. Our society's prevailing victim mentality that physicians are responsible for any bad medical outcome has led me to the point where I actually actively discourage any young person who wishes to practice medicine, including my own children. For those of you who subscribe to the "hate the privileged doctor class warfare mentality", I have this advice: Go Treat Yourselves.

I really think that you have missed the point here.

The poster was mearly trying to point out that sometime we direct our concerns about emotional issues to the wrong places.

Why focus our energy on guns, as opposed to many other far more prevalent causes of death... unless of course there's a political motivation behind it...

Liberals are always complaining about getting to the root of the problem  unless it deals with gun rights. Then they abandon all logical analysis and resort to hysteria, distortion and downright lies.

Name, please, one issue where the liberals do NOT abandon all logical analysis and do NOT resort to hysteria, etc.

I've told this story on FR before... I'll tell it again... when I was 2 years old, my mother felt something was seriously wrong with me. She went to a doctor, who said I had the flu and sent me home. She went to the ER, who said & did the same. As this was on a naval base, my father dressed up in full officer uniform and marched to the ER with me and demanded they admit me. They finally did so--and took a spinal tap... the fluid was so cloudy, they didn't even wait for the results, they pumped me full of antibiotics and told my parents they'd know by morning whether I'd live or not... and if they'd waited one more night, I would've died.

So it was a misdiagnosis, but I don't blame the doctors, I blame people like my friend who ran to the ER for cutting her finger on an opened can lid and screamed until she saw a doctor and got a shot. Those cases make doctors quite cynical and deaf to a mother's true instinct.

47
posted on 12/29/2004 5:26:02 PM PST
by Nataku X
(There are no converts in Islam... only hostages.)

Hello Doc. I've practiced general surgery since 1979. Just recently retired. You get it. The folks need to consider that everytime we take an imflammed appendix out or a gall bladder, we have saved that persons life as compared to the preantibiotic era. Before antibiotics and vaccines people died of disease no one dies of today, or very few. As for retirement, I recommmend you get there as fast as possible. It is wonderful.

Really? No need to be defensive? Gosh, what a relief. I thought the big headline on the post was "Doctors Kill More People Than Guns Do". I guess I'm wrong to resent seeing my profession maligned yet again.

And no one is after me? Gosh, that explains the 5 lawsuits I've had in my years of practice, every one of which was unfounded, and every one of which was a judgment for the defense [me]. Yes, I won, at the cost of years of worry, loss of sleep, time away from work, and nice newspaper headlines such as "Local Doctor Charged with Negligence" prior to the defense verdict, which was buried on page 8.

The current figures are that the Emergency Physicians are sued once every 10.5 thousand patients. I currently see 9.1 thousand patients a year. No, I shouldn't be defensive. No one is after me. Not even the posts about the wrong leg amputations, and the walk-out clinic. Darn it, I'm being oversensitive again.

49
posted on 12/29/2004 5:35:02 PM PST
by Bushforlife
(I've noticed that everybody that is for abortion has already been born. ~Ronald Reagan)

Nice story, but not a misdiagnosis. Some illnesses are very hard to diagnose, including meningitis. Good studies show that bacterial meningitis in its' early stages is ABSOLUTELY INDISTINGUISHABLE clinically from a viral syndrome. So unless we as a society are prepared to spinal tap every child that presents to the doctor with a fever, the diagnosis of meningitis will continue to be difficult, and some patients will be sent home. That is the fault of the way the disease presents, the lack of sensitivity of the current tests, but NOT the doctor. I always tell the parents of a feverish child that they need to return immediately if worse, and if not better in 2 days, because of just this situation.

You have doctors and fortune tellers mixed up. We can't predict the future.

If I told you that your 2 year old child with a fever of 101 needed a spinal tap, and he has absolutely no sign of meningitis on labs or physical exam, you would want to know why. If the reason is that there is a 1 in 100,000 chance that he could have early meningitis, but a 99,000 out of a 100,000 chance that it is just a virus, you would no doubt refuse. Yet he could have it. And if I routinely press parents to allow this, the complaints would drive me out of business ["this doctor has absolutely no indication that my child has meningitis, but he subjected her to a spinal tap!"]. So no doctor can practice like that. So we tell parents the odds, and send them home. And therefore the 1 in 100,000 who really HAS meningitis is NOT a misdiagnosis; it is a delayed presentation of disease.

50
posted on 12/29/2004 5:47:51 PM PST
by Bushforlife
(I've noticed that everybody that is for abortion has already been born. ~Ronald Reagan)

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